NYC Gives Green Light for Cab-Calling Apps Trial

The days of raising our arms and barking “TAXI!!” may soon be a thing of the past in Gotham. A nine-member NYC Taxi & Limousine Commission panel voted to approve a 1-year trial for apps that will allow you to hail taxis from your phone. Seven voted “Yes”, while two abstained.

Now for some details: people using an e-hail app south of East 59th street will only be able to get a taxi that’s half a mile within their current location. In any other part of the city, that radius triples to a mile and a half. Drivers are required to accept a trip with a single tap on the app, and payment solutions are still being worked out.

E-hailing apps like Uber and Hailo will likely take a crack at getting in on this opportunity, while GetTaxi, which is already up and running in London, Moscow and Israel, is less certain if it will. It’ll be interesting to see how well this gets executed in such a massive metropolis like The Big Apple. Stay tuned.